blogstring.com

Xonbi is Inbox backwards, and they’re in public beta. They also have an excellent, creative way to spread awareness of their brand. But first, what’s xobni?

Well, it’s an email plugin.

Not very sexy right? I mean, email has been around for, well, a long time. So any claim to having an innovative product around email is met with either yawns or healthy criticism. It’s kind of like telling the world you have an innovative new way to tie shoelaces.

Here’s what Xobni’s about page says about the plugin:

Xobni Insight is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that offers effortless email management and provides instant access to the most important information in your email.

After a quick install, you’ll see the new Xobni toolbar appear in Outlook – and suddenly your Outlook productivity will burst to life with blazing fast email search, automatic phone number discovery, threaded conversations, and more.

Because of that, the folks at xobni should have a tough time spreading the word. How do you generate excitement for this?

Here’s how.

Like any other invite-only beta, the people behind xobni have embraced the notion of artificial scarcity. Only let a select group of people try the thing, and others will want it simply based on the exclusivity of those invited. Makes sense. But instead of just tossing out invites, the Xobni guys have done something that made me shake my head and say “why didn’t I think of this?”

When you go to Xobni.com, you’ll see the following call to action:

Which brings you to their signup form, with the following:

Dude: priority access. For an email plugin. Brilliant.

They know you want to try xobni, and they’re playing on the fact that people want things immediately. Toss a couple of friends in the box and you’ll get it sooner.

But wait, there’s more.

If you have a blog, you can move forward in the line by adding the following badge:

The selling point:

Once you’ve referred at least 2 people to our beta, we’ll move you to the top of the beta list and send you an invite code (usually within a few days)!

This is the best mechanism for creating excitement for an invite-only beta I’ve seen so far. They:

• Make people want an invite because it is a private service
• Take advantage of manufactured scarcity and use exclusivity to perpetuate demand
• Make people want to sign up their friends in order to skip the line
• Increase their search engine rankings by adding a blog badge (again, so those that want an invite can move ahead in line by linking to xobni)

Very nice job. Very nice.

Filed under: betas, marketing, social media